Incredible tales of survival in a stunning photoseries from Dietmar Eckell

FROM Australia to Iceland, you'll wonder how anyone walked away from these scattered wrecks of planes.

'Forced' landings in remote locations usually spell disaster for those on board light aircraft.

The nightmarish scenes of panic and terror; the smell of smoke; the sound of engines failing are all silenced with this stunning photo-series.

Aiming to highlight the rare 'good news stories' from the history of aviation, the series highlights that miracles can happen.

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"'Happy End' is a photo-project about miracles in aviation history - 15 airplanes that had forced landings but all on board survived and were rescued from the remote locations," says Dietmar Eckell a photographer from Dusseldorf, Germany.

What is surprising about this photo series is that instead of being cleaned up, these wrecks are left to decompose in their remote dwellings.

These planes have remain abandoned from anywhere between 10-70 years according to Eckell and all involve stories of survival and sheer luck.

Aiming to publish his own photobook, Eckell has spent two years traveling the world and documenting the stories of these wrecks and the people who lived to tell the tale of the day they escaped certain death.

"Aviation miracles are rare and the planes remaining out there are very remote - but the challenge was motivation and it was like a pilgrimage to get to these wonders."

The project is part of an even bigger series called 'restwert' (German for residual value). Eckell is interested in documenting abandoned objects with fascinating backgrounds: "like cold war relics, Olympic sites, flooded churches, railroad tracks, never finished nuclear reactors, overgrown adventure parks."